Saturday

The team arrived safely in Nairobi Kenya today around noon, along with all their luggage! After lengthy negotiations, they wound up paying only $33 to take the basketballs through customs into the country. Bottom line: it’s all there!

The team will spend the night in Nairobi and fly into Eldoret tomorrow in the early afternoon.

Team members are: Brent Wilson, Bryan Hanysak, Pat Kekic, Brian Peters, Michael Hillman.

Monday

We had a great first day of camps. The kids are super nice and respectful. We all had lots of fun.

Moses, our host, has brought Hoops for Hope camp to Kenya from what he learned visiting our camp in Uganda last year. The coaches and kids have been through this camp several times before and are good at it.

It’s fun to see how Hoops has multiplied through East Africa without our presence in Kenya.

We met Eliud Kipchoge, the best marathon runner in the world, today! What an honor!

From Wikipedia: He is a Kenyan long-distance runner who competes in the marathon and formerly the 5000 metres. He won the 2019 London Marathon in a time of 2:02:37, the second fastest marathon of all time, behind his 2018 Berlin Marathon win, where he broke the previous world record by 1 minute and 18 seconds. This is the greatest improvement in a marathon world record time since 1967. His fourth win in London marks a new course record, beating his own 2016 London Marathon record by 28 seconds. He lives in Eldoret with his wife and children.

Today was a great day, even when the cows came through!

Tuesday

Our morning session was great! All the kids are excited and were waiting for us when we arrived. We added 9 new kids to our group, which is exciting.

Everyone is really enjoying camp and the basketball outreach Moses has in Kenya; it is really impressive. It’s an entire community of people loving others and loving basketball.

It rained last night, so at the beginning of camp all the kids happily joined in sweeping the court with pine tree branches. It looked like our afternoon camp was being rained out after 30 solid minutes of downpour, but the rain stopped, everyone swept off the court again, and we got back at it!

Wednesday

Camps are going great! We added 10 people to camp this morning, taking us up to 41 in the morning camp. We are maxed out at 50 in the afternoon, with many watching from the sidelines.

We got a speaker today to play music for the camp and it was a huge hit. The boys had so much fun.

Thursday

It was a great final day of camp. The support team Moses has here in Eldoret is amazing. We had 3 or 4 friends come to our final ceremony and share with the kids. The leaders all love Moses and the work he is doing promoting basketball in Eldoret, and join him in pouring into the children here. Everyone in the basketball programs is hearing a message of hope because of the work Moses is doing. We are grateful to have partnered with them this week!

We will enjoy the sights of Kenya tomorrow before we begin our journey back home Saturday afternoon. Thank you for your support this week. It was awesome!